{"id":238,"date":"2013-11-21T18:56:47","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T18:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=238"},"modified":"2016-11-21T17:34:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T17:34:57","slug":"9-3-communicating-with-others-the-development-and-use-of-language","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/chapter\/9-3-communicating-with-others-the-development-and-use-of-language\/","title":{"raw":"10.3 Communicating with Others: The Development and Use of Language","rendered":"10.3 Communicating with Others: The Development and Use of Language"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>Review the components and structure of language.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Explain the biological underpinnings of language.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Outline the theories of language development.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\nHuman language is the most complex behaviour on the planet and, at least as far as we know, in the universe. Language involves both the ability to comprehend spoken and written words and to create communication in real time when we speak or write. Most languages are oral, generated through speaking. Speaking involves a variety of complex cognitive, social, and biological processes including operation of the vocal cords, and the coordination of breath with movements of the throat, mouth, and tongue.\r\n\r\nOther languages are sign languages, in which the communication is expressed by movements of the hands. The most common sign language is American Sign Language (ASL), commonly used in many countries across the world and adapted for use in varying countries. The other main sign language used in Canada is la\u00a0Langue des Signes Qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise (LSQ); there is also a regional dialect, Maritimes Sign Language (MSL).\r\n\r\nAlthough language is often used for the transmission of information (\u201cturn right at the next light and then go straight,\u201d \u201cPlace tab A into slot B\u201d), this is only its most mundane function. Language also allows us to access existing knowledge, to draw conclusions, to set and accomplish goals, and to understand and communicate complex social relationships. Language is fundamental to our ability to think, and without it we would be nowhere near as intelligent as we are.\r\n\r\nLanguage can be conceptualized in terms of sounds, meaning, and the environmental factors that help us understand it. <em>Phonemes<\/em> are the elementary sounds of our language, <em>morphemes<\/em> are the smallest units of meaning in a language, <em>syntax<\/em> is the set of grammatical rules that control how words are put together, and <em>contextual information<\/em> is the elements of communication that are not part of the content of language but that help us understand its meaning.\r\n<h2>The Components of Language<\/h2>\r\nA <strong>phoneme<\/strong> is <em>the smallest unit of sound that makes a meaningful difference in a language<\/em>. The word \u201cbit\u201d has three phonemes, \/b\/, \/i\/, and \/t\/ (in transcription, phonemes are placed between slashes), and the word \u201cpit\u201d also has three: \/p\/, \/i\/, and \/t\/. In spoken languages, phonemes are produced by the positions and movements of the vocal tract, including our lips, teeth, tongue, vocal cords, and throat, whereas in sign languages phonemes are defined by the shapes and movement of the hands.\r\n\r\nThere are hundreds of unique phonemes that can be made by human speakers, but most languages only use a small subset of the possibilities. English contains about 45 phonemes, whereas other languages have as few as 15 and others more than 60. The Hawaiian language contains only about a dozen phonemes, including five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, and w).\r\n\r\nIn addition to using a different set of phonemes, because the phoneme is actually a category of sounds that are treated alike within the language, speakers of different languages are able to hear the difference only between some phonemes but not others. This is known as the <em>categorical perception of speech sounds<\/em>. English speakers can differentiate the \/r\/ phoneme from the \/l\/ phoneme, and thus \u201crake\u201d and \u201clake\u201d are heard as different words. In Japanese, however, \/r\/ and \/l\/ are the same phoneme, and thus speakers of that language cannot tell the difference between the word \u201crake\u201d and the word \u201clake.\u201d Try saying the words \u201ccool\u201d and \u201ckeep\u201d out loud. Can you hear the difference between the two \/k\/ sounds? To English speakers they both sound the same, but to speakers of Arabic these represent two different phonemes (Figure 10.9, \"Speech Sounds and Adults\").\r\n\r\nInfants are born able to understand all phonemes, but they lose their ability to do so as they get older; by 10 months of age a child\u2019s ability to recognize phonemes becomes very similar to that of the adult speakers of the native language. Phonemes that were initially differentiated come to be treated as equivalent (Werker &amp; Tees, 2002).\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_233\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]<a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f-1024x411.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-233\" height=\"161\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> Figure 10.9 Speech Sounds and Adults. When adults hear speech sounds that gradually change from one phoneme to another, they do not hear the continuous change; rather, they hear one sound until they suddenly begin hearing the other. In this case, the change is from \/ba\/ to \/pa\/.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nWhereas phonemes are the smallest units of sound in language, a <strong>morpheme<\/strong> is <em>a string of one or more phonemes that makes up the smallest units of meaning in a language<\/em>. Some morphemes, such as one-letter words like \u201cI\u201d and \u201ca,\u201d are also phonemes, but most morphemes are made up of combinations of phonemes. Some morphemes are prefixes and suffixes used to modify other words. For example, the syllable \u201cre-\u201d as in \u201crewrite\u201d or \u201crepay\u201d means \u201cto do again,\u201d and the suffix \u201c-est\u201d as in \u201chappiest\u201d or \u201ccoolest\u201d means \u201cto the maximum.\u201d\r\n\r\n<strong>Syntax<\/strong> is <em>the set of rules of a language by which we construct sentences<\/em>. Each language has a different syntax. The syntax of the English language requires that each sentence have a noun and a verb, each of which may be modified by adjectives and adverbs. Some syntaxes make use of the order in which words appear, while others do not. In English, \u201cThe man bites the dog\u201d is different from \u201cThe dog bites the man.\u201d In German, however, only the article endings before the noun matter. \u201cDer Hund beisst den Mann\u201d means \u201cThe dog bites the man\u201d but so does \u201cDen Mann beisst der Hund.\u201d\r\n\r\nWords do not possess fixed meanings but change their interpretation as a function of the context in which they are spoken. We use <strong>contextual information\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014\u00a0<em>the information surrounding language<\/em>\u2014to help us interpret it. Examples of contextual information include the knowledge that we have and that we know that other people have, and nonverbal expressions such as facial expressions, postures, gestures, and tone of voice. Misunderstandings can easily arise if people aren\u2019t attentive to contextual information or if some of it is missing, such as it may be in newspaper headlines or in text messages.\r\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\r\n<h3>Examples in Which Syntax Is Correct but the Interpretation Can Be Ambiguous<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Grandmother of Eight Makes Hole in One<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Farmer Bill Dies in House<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Old School Pillars Are Replaced by Alumni<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Include Your Children When Baking Cookies<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2>The Biology and Development of Language<\/h2>\r\nAnyone who has tried to master a second language as an adult knows the difficulty of language learning. And yet children learn languages easily and naturally. Children who are not exposed to language early in their lives will likely never learn one. Case studies, including Victor the \u201cWild Child,\u201d who was abandoned as a baby in France and not discovered until he was 12, and Genie, a child whose parents kept her locked in a closet from 18 months until 13 years of age, are (fortunately) two of the only known examples of these deprived children. Both of these children made some progress in socialization after they were rescued, but neither of them ever developed language (Rymer, 1993).\u00a0This is also why it is important to determine quickly if a child is deaf and to begin immediately to communicate in sign language. Deaf children who are not exposed to sign language during their early years will likely never learn it (Mayberry, Lock, &amp; Kazmi, 2002).\r\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\r\n<h3>Research Focus: When Can We Best Learn Language? Testing the Critical Period Hypothesis<\/h3>\r\nFor many years psychologists assumed that there was a <strong>critical period<\/strong> (<em>a time in which learning can easily occur<\/em>) for language learning, lasting between infancy and puberty, and after which language learning was more difficult or impossible (Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield &amp; Roberts, 1959).\u00a0But later research provided a different interpretation.\r\n\r\nAn important study by Jacqueline Johnson and Elissa Newport (1989)\u00a0using Chinese and Korean speakers who had learned English as a second language provided the first insight. The participants were all adults who had immigrated to the United States between three and 39 years of age and who were tested on their English skills by being asked to detect grammatical errors in sentences. Johnson and Newport found that the participants who had begun learning English before they were seven years old learned it as well as native English speakers but that the ability to learn English dropped off gradually for the participants who had started later. Newport and Johnson also found a correlation between the age of acquisition and the variance in the ultimate learning of the language. While early learners were almost all successful in acquiring their language to a high degree of proficiency, later learners showed much greater individual variation.\r\n\r\nJohnson and Newport\u2019s finding that children who immigrated before they were seven years old learned English fluently seemed consistent with the idea of a critical period in language learning. But their finding of a gradual decrease in proficiency for those who immigrated between eight and 39 years of age was not \u2014 rather, it suggested that there might not be a single critical period of language learning that ended at puberty, as early theorists had expected, but that language learning at later ages is simply better when it occurs earlier. This idea was reinforced in research by Hakuta, Bialystok, and Wiley (2003),\u00a0who examined census records of language learning in millions of Chinese and Spanish immigrants. The census form asks respondents to describe their own English ability using one of five categories: not at all, not well, well, very well, and speak only English. The results of this research dealt another blow to the idea of the critical period, because it showed that regardless of what year was used as a cutoff point for the end of the critical period, there was no evidence for any discontinuity in language-learning potential. Rather, the results (Figure 10.10, \"English Proficiency in Native Chinese Speakers\") showed that the degree of success in second-language acquisition declined steadily throughout the respondent\u2019s life span. The difficulty of learning language as one gets older is probably due to the fact that, with age, the brain loses its <strong>plasticity\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014 that is, <em>its ability to develop new neural connections<\/em>.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_234\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]<a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a-1024x410.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-234\" height=\"160\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> Figure 10.10 English Proficiency in Native Chinese Speakers. Hakuta, Bialystok, and Wiley (2003) found no evidence for critical periods in language learning. Regardless of level of education, self-reported second-language skills decreased consistently across age of immigration.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nFor the 90% of people who are right-handed, language is stored and controlled by the left cerebral cortex, although for some left-handers this pattern is reversed. These differences can easily be seen in the results of neuroimaging studies that show that listening to and producing language creates greater activity in the left hemisphere than in the right. <strong>Broca\u2019s area<\/strong>, <em>an area in front of the left hemisphere near the motor cortex<\/em>, is responsible for language production (Figure 10.11, \"Drawing of Brain Showing Broca\u2019s and Wernicke\u2019s Areas\"). This area was first localized in the 1860s by the French physician Paul Broca, who studied patients with lesions to various parts of the brain.<strong> Wernicke\u2019s area<\/strong>, <em>an area of the brain next to the auditory cortex<\/em>, is responsible for language comprehension.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_235\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]<a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4-1024x676.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-235\" height=\"264\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> Figure 10.11 Drawing of Brain Showing Broca\u2019s and Wernicke\u2019s Areas.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nEvidence for the importance of Broca\u2019s and Wernicke\u2019s areas in language is seen in patients who experience <strong>aphasia<\/strong>, <em>a condition in which language functions are severely impaired<\/em>. People with Broca\u2019s aphasia have difficulty producing speech, whereas people with damage to Wernicke\u2019s area can produce speech, but what they say makes no sense and they have trouble understanding language.\r\n<h2>Learning Language<\/h2>\r\nLanguage learning begins even before birth, because the fetus can hear muffled versions of speaking from outside the womb. Moon, Cooper, and Fifer (1993)\u00a0found that infants only two days old sucked harder on a pacifier when they heard their mothers\u2019 native language being spoken than when they heard a foreign language, even when strangers were speaking the languages. Babies are also aware of the patterns of their native language, showing surprise when they hear speech that has a different patterns of phonemes than those they are used to (Saffran, Aslin, &amp; Newport, 2004).\r\n\r\nDuring the first year or so after birth, and long before they speak their first words, infants are already learning language. One aspect of this learning is practice in producing speech. By the time they are six to eight\u00a0weeks old, babies start making vowel sounds (ooohh, aaahh, goo) as well as a variety of cries and squeals to help them practice.\r\n\r\nAt about seven months, infants begin <strong>babbling<\/strong>, engaging in <em>intentional vocalizations that lack specific meaning<\/em>. Children babble as practice in creating specific sounds, and by the time they are one year old, the babbling uses primarily the sounds of the language that they are learning (de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, &amp; Durand, 1984).\u00a0These vocalizations have a conversational tone that sounds meaningful even though it isn\u2019t. Babbling also helps children understand the social, communicative function of language (Figure 10.12, \"Practising Language\"). Children who are exposed to sign language babble in sign by making hand movements that represent real language (Petitto &amp; Marentette, 1991).\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_4387\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]<a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12.jpg\" alt=\"A young child talking on the phone.\" class=\"wp-image-4387\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> Figure 10.12 Practising Language. Babies often engage in vocal exchanges to help them practise language.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAt the same time that infants are practising their speaking skills by babbling, they are also learning to better understand sounds and eventually the words of language. One of the first words that children understand is their own name, usually by about six months, followed by commonly used words like \u201cbottle,\u201d \u201cmama,\u201d and \u201cdoggie\u201d by 10 to 12 months (Mandel, Jusczyk, &amp; Pisoni, 1995).\r\n\r\nThe infant usually produces his or her first words at about one year of age. It is at this point that the child first understands that words are more than sounds \u2014 they refer to particular objects and ideas. By the time children are two years old, they have a vocabulary of several hundred words, and by kindergarten their vocabularies have increased to several thousand words. By Grade 5,\u00a0most children know about 50,000 words and by the time they are in university, about 200,000.\r\n\r\nThe early utterances of children contain many errors, for instance, confusing \/b\/ and \/d\/, or \/c\/ and \/z\/. And the words that children create are often simplified, in part because they are not yet able to make the more complex sounds of the real language (Dobrich &amp; Scarborough, 1992).\u00a0Children may say \u201ckeekee\u201d for kitty, \u201cnana\u201d for banana, and \u201cvesketti\u201d for spaghetti in part because it is easier. Often these early words are accompanied by gestures that may also be easier to produce than the words themselves. Children\u2019s pronunciations become increasingly accurate between one and three years, but some problems may persist until school age.\r\n\r\nMost of a child\u2019s first words are nouns, and early sentences may include only the noun. \u201cMa\u201d may mean \u201cmore milk please\u201d and \u201cda\u201d may mean \u201clook, there\u2019s Fido.\u201d Eventually the length of the utterances increases to two words (\u201cmo ma\u201d or \u201cda bark\u201d), and these primitive sentences begin to follow the appropriate syntax of the native language.\r\n\r\nBecause language involves the active categorization of sounds and words into higher level units, children make some mistakes in interpreting what words mean and how to use them. In particular, they often make <strong>overextensions<\/strong> of concepts, <em>which means they use a given word in a broader context than appropriate<\/em>. A child might at first call all adult men \u201cdaddy\u201d or all animals \u201cdoggie.\u201d\r\n\r\nChildren also use contextual information, particularly the cues that parents provide, to help them learn language. Infants are frequently more attuned to the tone of voice of the person speaking than to the content of the words themselves, and are aware of the target of speech. Werker, Pegg, and McLeod (1994)\u00a0found that infants listened longer to a woman who was speaking to a baby than to a woman who was speaking to another adult.\r\n\r\nChildren learn that people are usually referring to things that they are looking at when they are speaking (Baldwin, 1993),\u00a0and that that the speaker\u2019s emotional expressions are related to the content of their speech. Children also use their knowledge of syntax to help them figure out what words mean. If a child hears an adult point to a strange object and say, \u201cthis is a dirb,\u201d they will infer that a \u201cdirb\u201d is a thing, but if they hear them say, \u201cthis is a one of those dirb things\u201d they will infer that it refers to the colour or other characteristic of the object. And if they hear the word \u201cdirbing,\u201d they will infer that \u201cdirbing\u201d is something that we do (Waxman, 1990).\r\n<h2>How Children Learn Language: Theories of Language Acquisition<\/h2>\r\nPsychological theories of language learning differ in terms of the importance they place on nature versus nurture. Yet it is clear that both matter. Children are not born knowing language; they learn to speak by hearing what happens around them. On the other hand, human brains, unlike those of any other animal, are prewired in a way that leads them, almost effortlessly, to learn language.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most straightforward explanation of language development is that it occurs through principles of learning, including association, reinforcement, and the observation of others (Skinner, 1965).\u00a0There must be at least some truth to the idea that language is learned, because children learn the language that they hear spoken around them rather than some other language. Also supporting this idea is the gradual improvement of language skills with time. It seems that children modify their language through imitation, reinforcement, and shaping, as would be predicted by learning theories.\r\n\r\nBut language cannot be entirely learned. For one, children learn words too fast for them to be learned through reinforcement. Between the ages of 18 months and five years, children learn up to 10 new words every day (Anglin, 1993).\u00a0More importantly, language is more <em>generative<\/em> than it is imitative. <strong>Generativity<\/strong> refers to <em>the fact that speakers of a language can compose sentences to represent new ideas that they have never before been exposed to<\/em>. Language is not a predefined set of ideas and sentences that we choose when we need them, but rather a system of rules and procedures that allows us to create an infinite number of statements, thoughts, and ideas, including those that have never previously occurred. When a child says that she \u201cswimmed\u201d in the pool, for instance, she is showing generativity. No adult speaker of English would ever say \u201cswimmed,\u201d yet it is easily generated from the normal system of producing language.\r\n\r\nOther evidence that refutes the idea that all language is learned through experience comes from the observation that children may learn languages better than they ever hear them. Deaf children whose parents do not speak ASL very well nevertheless are able to learn it perfectly on their own, and may even make up their own language if they need to (Goldin-Meadow &amp; Mylander, 1998).\u00a0A group of deaf children in a school in Nicaragua, whose teachers could not sign, invented a way to communicate through made-up signs (Senghas, Senghas, &amp; Pyers, 2005).\u00a0The development of this new Nicaraguan Sign Language has continued and changed as new generations of students have come to the school and started using the language. Although the original system was not a real language, it is becoming closer and closer every year, showing the development of a new language in modern times.\r\n\r\nThe linguist Noam Chomsky is a believer in the nature approach to language, arguing that human brains contain a <em>language acquisition device<\/em> that includes a <em>universal grammar<\/em> that underlies all human language (Chomsky, 1965, 1972).\u00a0According to this approach, each of the many languages spoken around the world (there are between 6,000 and 8,000) is an individual example of the same underlying set of procedures that are hardwired into human brains. Chomsky\u2019s account proposes that children are born with a knowledge of general rules of syntax that determine how sentences are constructed.\r\n\r\nChomsky differentiates between the<strong> deep structure of an idea\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014\u00a0<em>how the idea is represented in the fundamental universal grammar that is common to all languages<\/em>, and the <strong>surface structure of the idea\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014\u00a0<em>how it is expressed in any one language<\/em>. Once we hear or express a thought in surface structure, we generally forget exactly how it happened. At the end of a lecture, you will remember a lot of the deep structure (i.e., the ideas expressed by the instructor), but you cannot reproduce the surface structure (the exact words that the instructor used to communicate the ideas).\r\n\r\nAlthough there is general agreement among psychologists that babies are genetically programmed to learn language, there is still debate about Chomsky\u2019s idea that there is a universal grammar that can account for all language learning. Evans and Levinson (2009)\u00a0surveyed the world\u2019s languages and found that none of the presumed underlying features of the language acquisition device were entirely universal. In their search they found languages that did not have noun or verb phrases, that did not have tenses (e.g., past, present, future), and even some that did not have nouns or verbs at all, even though a basic assumption of a universal grammar is that all languages should share these features.\r\n<h2>Bilingualism and Cognitive Development<\/h2>\r\n<strong>Bilingualism<\/strong> (<em>the ability to speak two languages<\/em>) is becoming more and more frequent in the modern world. Nearly one-half of the world\u2019s population, including 17% of Canadian citizens, grows up bilingual.\r\n\r\nIn Canada, education is under provincial jurisdiction; however, the federal government has been a strong supporter of establishing Canada as a bilingual country and has helped pioneer the French immersion programs in the public education systems throughout the country. In contrast,\u00a0many U.S. states have passed laws outlawing bilingual education in schools based on the idea that students will have a stronger identity with the school, the culture, and the government if they speak only English, and in part based on the idea that speaking two languages may interfere with cognitive development.\r\n\r\nA variety of minority language immersion programs are now offered across the country depending on need and interest. In British Columbia, for instance,\u00a0the city of Vancouver \u00a0established a new bilingual Mandarin Chinese-English immersion program in\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">2002\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">at the elementary school level in order accommodate Vancouver's both historic and present strong ties to the Chinese-speaking world. Similar programs have been developed for both Hindi and Punjabi to serve the large South Asian cultural community in the city of Surrey. By default, most schools in British Columbia teach in English, with French immersion options available. In both English and French schools, one can study and take government exams in Japanese, Punjabi, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, and German at the secondary level.<\/span>\r\n\r\nSome early psychological research showed that, when compared with monolingual children, bilingual children performed more slowly when processing language, and their verbal scores were lower. But these tests were frequently given in English, even when this was not the child\u2019s first language, and the children tested were often of lower socioeconomic status than the monolingual children (Andrews, 1982).\r\n\r\nMore current research that has controlled for these factors has found that, although bilingual children may, in some cases, learn language somewhat slower than do monolingual children (Oller &amp; Pearson, 2002),\u00a0bilingual and monolingual children do not significantly differ in the final depth of language learning, nor do they generally confuse the two languages (Nicoladis &amp; Genesee, 1997).\u00a0In fact, participants who speak two languages have been found to have better cognitive functioning, cognitive flexibility, and analytic skills in comparison to monolinguals (Bialystok, 2009).\u00a0Research (Figure 10.13, \"Gray Matter in Bilinguals\") has also found that learning a second language produces changes in the area of the brain in the left hemisphere that is involved in language, such that this area is denser and contains more neurons (Mechelli et al., 2004).\u00a0Furthermore, the increased density is stronger in those individuals who are most proficient in their second language and who learned the second language earlier. Thus, rather than slowing language development, learning a second language seems to increase cognitive abilities.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_237\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]<a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f-682x1024.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-237\" height=\"600\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> Figure 10.13 Gray Matter in Bilinguals. Andrea Mechelli and her colleagues (2004) found that children who were bilingual had increased gray matter density (i.e., more neurons) in cortical areas related to language in comparison to monolinguals (panel a), that gray matter density correlated positively with second language proficiency (panel b) and that gray matter density correlated negatively with the age at which the second language was learned (panel c).[\/caption]\r\n<h2>Can Animals Learn Language?<\/h2>\r\nNonhuman animals have a wide variety of systems of communication. Some species communicate using scents; others use visual displays, such as baring the teeth, puffing up the fur, or flapping the wings; and still others use vocal sounds. Male songbirds, such as canaries and finches, sing songs to attract mates and to protect territory, and chimpanzees use a combination of facial expressions, sounds, and actions, such as slapping the ground, to convey aggression (de Waal, 1989).\u00a0Honeybees use a waggle dance to direct other bees to the location of food sources (von Frisch, 1956).\u00a0The language of vervet monkeys is relatively advanced in the sense that they use specific sounds to communicate specific meanings. Vervets make different calls to signify that they have seen either a leopard, a snake, or a hawk (Seyfarth &amp; Cheney, 1997).\r\n\r\nDespite their wide abilities to communicate, efforts to teach animals to use language have had only limited success. One of the early efforts was made by Catherine and Keith Hayes, who raised a chimpanzee named Viki in their home along with their own children. But Viki learned little and could never speak (Hayes &amp; Hayes, 1952).\u00a0Researchers speculated that Viki\u2019s difficulties might have been in part because she could not create the words in her vocal cords, and so subsequent attempts were made to teach primates to speak using sign language or boards on which they can point to symbols.\r\n\r\nAllen and Beatrix Gardner worked for many years to teach a chimpanzee named Washoe to sign using ASL. Washoe, who lived to be 42 years old, could label up to 250 different objects and make simple requests and comments, such as \u201cplease tickle\u201d and \u201cme sorry\u201d (Fouts, 1997).\u00a0Washoe\u2019s adopted daughter Loulis, who was never exposed to human signers, learned more than 70 signs simply by watching her mother sign.\r\n\r\nThe most proficient nonhuman language speaker is Kanzi, a bonobo who lives at the Language Learning Center at Georgia State University (Savage-Rumbaugh &amp; Lewin, 1994).\u00a0As you can see in \"Video Clip: Language Recognition in Bonobos,\" Kanzi has a propensity for language that is in many ways similar to humans. He learned faster when he was younger than when he got older, he learns by observation, and he can use symbols to comment on social interactions, rather than simply for food treats. Kanzi can also create elementary syntax and understand relatively complex commands. Kanzi can make tools and can even play the video game Pac-Man.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/09\/kanzi.png\"><img src=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/09\/kanzi-150x150.png\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2692 size-thumbnail\" height=\"150\" width=\"150\" \/><\/a><em>The bonobo Kanzi is the most proficient known nonhuman language speaker.<\/em>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE\">Watch: \"Kanzi and Novel Sentences\" [YouTube]<\/a>: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nAnd yet even Kanzi does not have a true language in the same way that humans do. Human babies learn words faster and faster as they get older, but Kanzi does not. Each new word he learns is almost as difficult as the one before. Kanzi usually requires many trials to learn a new sign, whereas human babies can speak words after only one exposure. Kanzi\u2019s language is focused primarily on food and pleasure and only rarely on social relationships. Although he can combine words, he generates few new phrases and cannot master syntactic rules beyond the level of about a two-year-old human child (Greenfield &amp; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991).\r\n\r\nIn sum, although many animals communicate, none of them has a true language. With some exceptions, the information that can be communicated in nonhuman species is limited primarily to displays of liking or disliking, and related to basic motivations of aggression and mating. Humans also use this more primitive type of communication, in the form of <em>nonverbal behaviours<\/em> such as eye contact, touch, hand signs, and interpersonal distance, to communicate their like or dislike for others, but they (unlike animals) also supplant this more primitive communication with language. Although other animal brains share similarities to ours, only the human brain is complex enough to create language. What is perhaps most remarkable is that although language never appears in nonhumans, language is universal in humans. All humans, unless they have a profound brain abnormality or are completely isolated from other humans, learn language.\r\n<h2>Language and Perception<\/h2>\r\nTo this point in the chapter we have considered intelligence and language as if they are separate concepts. But what if language influences our thinking? <em>The idea that language and its structures influence and limit human thought<\/em> is called<strong> linguistic relativity<\/strong>.\r\n\r\nThe most frequently cited example of this possibility was proposed by Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941), a linguist who was particularly interested in Aboriginal languages. Whorf argued that the Inuit people of Canada had many words for snow, whereas English speakers have only one, and that this difference influenced how the different cultures perceived snow. Whorf argued that the Inuit perceived and categorized snow in finer details than English speakers possibly could, because the English language constrained perception.\r\n\r\nAlthough the idea of linguistic relativism seemed reasonable, research has suggested that language has less influence on thinking than might be expected. For one, in terms of perceptions of snow, although it is true that the Inuit do make more distinctions among types of snow than English speakers\u00a0do, the latter also make some distinctions (think powder, slush, whiteout, and so forth). And it is also possible that thinking about snow may influence language, rather than the other way around.\r\n\r\nIn a more direct test of the possibility that language influences thinking, Eleanor Rosch (1973)\u00a0compared people from the Dani culture of New Guinea, who have only two terms for colour (dark and bright), with English speakers who use many more terms. Rosch hypothesized that if language constrains perception and categorization, then the Dani should have a harder time distinguishing colours than English speakers\u00a0would. But her research found that when the Dani were asked to categorize colours using new categories, they did so in almost the same way that English speakers did. Similar results were found by Frank, Everett, Fedorenko, and Gibson (2008),\u00a0who showed that the Amazonian tribe known as the Pirah\u00e3, who have no linguistic method for expressing exact quantities (not even the number one), were nevertheless able to perform matches with large numbers without problem.\r\n\r\nAlthough these data led researchers to conclude that the language we use to describe colour and number does not influence our underlying understanding of the underlying sensation, another more recent study has questioned this assumption. Roberson, Davies, and Davidoff (2000)\u00a0conducted another study with Dani participants and found that, at least for some colours, the names that they used to describe colours did influence their perceptions of the colours. Other researchers continue to test the possibility that our language influences our perceptions, and perhaps even our thoughts (Levinson, 1998),\u00a0and yet the evidence for this possibility is, as of now, mixed.\r\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-success\">\r\n<h3>Key Takeaways<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Language involves both the ability to comprehend spoken and written words and to speak and write. Some languages are sign languages, in which the communication is expressed by movements of the hands.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Phonemes are the elementary sounds of our language, morphemes are the smallest units of meaningful language, syntax is the grammatical rules that control how words are put together, and contextual information is the elements of communication that help us understand its meaning.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Recent research suggests that there is not a single critical period of language learning, but that language learning is simply better when it occurs earlier.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Broca\u2019s area is responsible for language production. Wernicke\u2019s area is responsible for language comprehension.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Language learning begins even before birth. An infant usually produces his or her first words at about one year of age.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>One explanation of language development is that it occurs through principles of learning, including association, reinforcement, and the observation of others.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Noam Chomsky argues that human brains contain a language acquisition module that includes a universal grammar that underlies all human language. Chomsky differentiates between the deep structure and the surface structure of an idea.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Although other animals communicate and may be able to express ideas, only the human brain is complex enough to create real language.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Our language may have some influence on our thinking, but it does not affect our underlying understanding of concepts.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-info\">\r\n<h3>Exercises and Critical Thinking<\/h3>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>What languages do you speak? Did you ever try to learn a new one? What problems did you have when you did this? Would you consider trying to learn a new language?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Some animals, such as Kanzi, display at least some language. Do you think that this means that they are intelligent?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2>References<\/h2>\r\nAndrews, I. (1982). Bilinguals out of focus: A critical discussion.\u00a0<i>International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 20<\/i>(4), 297\u2013305.\r\n\r\nAnglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis.\u00a0<i>Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58<\/i>(10), v\u2013165.\r\n\r\nBaldwin, D. A. (1993). Early referential understanding: Infants\u2019 ability to recognize referential acts for what they are.\u00a0<i>Developmental Psychology, 29<\/i>(5), 832\u2013843.\r\n\r\nBialystok, E. (2009). Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent.\u00a0<i>Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12<\/i>(1), 3\u201311.\r\n\r\nChomsky, N. (1965).\u00a0<i>Aspects of the theory of syntax<\/i>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.\r\n\r\nChomsky, N. (1972).\u00a0<i>Language and mind<\/i>\u00a0(Extended ed.). New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace &amp; Jovanovich.\r\n\r\nde Boysson-Bardies, B., Sagart, L., &amp; Durand, C. (1984). Discernible differences in the babbling of infants according to target language.\u00a0<i>Journal of Child Language, 11<\/i>(1), 1\u201315.\r\n\r\nde Waal, F. (1989).\u00a0<i>Peacemaking among primates<\/i>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.\r\n\r\nDobrich, W., &amp; Scarborough, H. S. (1992). Phonological characteristics of words young children try to say.\u00a0<i>Journal of Child Language, 19<\/i>(3), 597\u2013616.\r\n\r\nEvans, N., &amp; Levinson, S. C. (2009). The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science.\u00a0<i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32<\/i>(5), 429\u2013448.\r\n\r\nFouts, R. (1997).\u00a0<i>Next of kin: What chimpanzees have taught me about who we are<\/i>. New York, NY: William Morrow.\r\n\r\nFrank, M. C., Everett, D. L., Fedorenko, E., &amp; Gibson, E. (2008). Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirah\u00e3 language and cognition.\u00a0<i>Cognition, 108<\/i>(3), 819\u2013824.\r\n\r\nGoldin-Meadow, S., &amp; Mylander, C. (1998). Spontaneous sign systems created by deaf children in two cultures.\u00a0<i>Nature, 391<\/i>(6664), 279\u2013281.\r\n\r\nGreenfield, P. M., &amp; Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S. (1991). Imitation, grammatical development, and the invention of protogrammar by an ape. In N. A. Krasnegor, D. M. Rumbaugh, R. L. Schiefelbusch, &amp; M. Studdert-Kennedy (Eds.),\u00a0<i>Biological and behavioral determinants of language development<\/i>\u00a0(pp. 235\u2013258). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.\r\n\r\nHakuta, K., Bialystok, E., &amp; Wiley, E. (2003). Critical evidence: A test of the critical-period hypothesis for second-language acquisition.\u00a0<i>Psychological Science, 14<\/i>(1), 31\u201338.\r\n\r\nHayes, K. J., and Hayes, C. (1952). Imitation in a home-raised chimpanzee.\u00a0<i>Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 45,<\/i>\u00a0450\u2013459.\r\n\r\nJohnson, J. S., &amp; Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language.\u00a0<i>Cognitive Psychology, 21<\/i>(1), 60\u201399.\r\n\r\nLenneberg, E. (1967).\u00a0<i>Biological foundations of language<\/i>. New York, NY: John Wiley &amp; Sons.\r\n\r\nLevinson, S. C. (1998). Studying spatial conceptualization across cultures: Anthropology and cognitive science.\u00a0<i>Ethos, 26<\/i>(1), 7\u201324.\r\n\r\nMandel, D. R., Jusczyk, P. W., &amp; Pisoni, D. B. (1995). Infants\u2019 recognition of the sound patterns of their own names.\u00a0<i>Psychological Science, 6<\/i>(5), 314\u2013317.\r\n\r\nMayberry, R. I., Lock, E., &amp; Kazmi, H. (2002). Development: Linguistic ability and early language exposure.\u00a0<i>Nature, 417<\/i>(6884), 38.\r\n\r\nMechelli, A., Crinion, J. T., Noppeney, U., O\u2019Doherty, J., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., &amp; Price C. J. (2004). Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain: Proficiency in a second language and age at acquisition affect grey-matter density.\u00a0<i>Nature, 431<\/i>, 757.\r\n\r\nMoon, C., Cooper, R. P., &amp; Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day-olds prefer their native language.\u00a0<i>Infant Behavior &amp; Development, 16<\/i>(4), 495\u2013500.\r\n\r\nNicoladis, E., &amp; Genesee, F. (1997). Language development in preschool bilingual children.\u00a0<i>Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, 21<\/i>(4), 258\u2013270.\r\n\r\nOller, D. K., &amp; Pearson, B. Z. (2002). Assessing the effects of bilingualism: A background. In D. K. Oller &amp; R. E. Eilers (Eds.),\u00a0<i>Language and literacy in bilingual children<\/i>\u00a0(pp. 3\u201321). Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters.\r\n\r\nPenfield, W., &amp; Roberts, L. (1959).\u00a0<i>Speech and brain mechanisms<\/i>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.\r\n\r\nPetitto, L. A., &amp; Marentette, P. F. (1991). Babbling in the manual mode: Evidence for the ontogeny of language.\u00a0<i>Science, 251<\/i>(5000), 1493\u20131496.\r\n\r\nRoberson, D., Davies, I., &amp; Davidoff, J. (2000). Color categories are not universal: Replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture.\u00a0<i>Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129<\/i>(3), 369\u2013398.\r\n\r\nRosch, E. H. (1973). Natural categories.\u00a0<i>Cognitive Psychology, 4<\/i>(3), 328\u2013350.\r\n\r\nRymer, R. (1993).\u00a0<i>Genie: An abused child\u2019s flight from silence<\/i>. New York, NY: HarperCollins.\r\n\r\nSaffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., &amp; Newport, E. L. (2004).\u00a0<i>Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants<\/i>. New York, NY: Psychology Press.\r\n\r\nSavage-Rumbaugh, S., &amp; Lewin, R. (1994).\u00a0<i>Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human mind<\/i>. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &amp; Sons.\r\n\r\nSenghas, R. J., Senghas, A., &amp; Pyers, J. E. (2005). The emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language: Questions of development, acquisition, and evolution. In S. T. Parker, J. Langer, &amp; C. Milbrath (Eds.),\u00a0<i>Biology and knowledge revisited: From neurogenesis to psychogenesis<\/i>\u00a0(pp. 287\u2013306). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.\r\n\r\nSeyfarth, R. M., &amp; Cheney, D. L. (1997). Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates.\u00a0<i>Animal Learning &amp; Behavior, 25<\/i>(3), 249\u2013267.\r\n\r\nSkinner, B. F. (1965).\u00a0<i>Science and human behavior.<\/i>\u00a0New York, NY: Free Press.\r\n\r\nvon Frisch, K. (1956).\u00a0<i>Bees: Their vision, chemical senses, and language<\/i>. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.\r\n\r\nWaxman, S. R. (1990). Linguistic biases and the establishment of conceptual hierarchies: Evidence from preschool children.\u00a0<i>Cognitive Development, 5<\/i>(2), 123\u2013150.\r\n\r\nWerker, J. F., &amp; Tees, R. C. (2002). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life.\u00a0<i>Infant Behavior &amp; Development, 25<\/i>(1), 121\u2013133.\r\n\r\nWerker, J. F., Pegg, J. E., &amp; McLeod, P. J. (1994). A cross-language investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication.\u00a0<i>Infant Behavior &amp; Development, 17<\/i>(3), 323\u2013333.\r\n\r\nWood, C. C. (1976). Discriminability, response bias, and phoneme categories in discrimination of voice onset time. <em>Journal of the Acoustical Society of America<\/em>, 60(6), 1381\u20131389.\r\n<h2>Image Attributions:<\/h2>\r\n<strong>Figure 10.9:<\/strong> Adapted from Wood, 1976.\r\n\r\n<strong>Figure 10.10:<\/strong> Adapted from Hakuta, Bialystok, &amp; Wiley, 2003.\r\n\r\n<strong>Figure 10.12:<\/strong> \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/criminalintent\/4310323032\/\">on the phone to mama<\/a>\" by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/criminalintent\/\">Lars Plougmann<\/a> (http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/criminalintent\/4310323032\/) is licensed under <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/deed.en_CA\">CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a> license (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/deed.en_CA)\r\n\r\n<strong>Figure 10.13:<\/strong> Adapted from Mechelli, et al., 2004.","rendered":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li>Review the components and structure of language.<\/li>\n<li>Explain the biological underpinnings of language.<\/li>\n<li>Outline the theories of language development.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<p>Human language is the most complex behaviour on the planet and, at least as far as we know, in the universe. Language involves both the ability to comprehend spoken and written words and to create communication in real time when we speak or write. Most languages are oral, generated through speaking. Speaking involves a variety of complex cognitive, social, and biological processes including operation of the vocal cords, and the coordination of breath with movements of the throat, mouth, and tongue.<\/p>\n<p>Other languages are sign languages, in which the communication is expressed by movements of the hands. The most common sign language is American Sign Language (ASL), commonly used in many countries across the world and adapted for use in varying countries. The other main sign language used in Canada is la\u00a0Langue des Signes Qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise (LSQ); there is also a regional dialect, Maritimes Sign Language (MSL).<\/p>\n<p>Although language is often used for the transmission of information (\u201cturn right at the next light and then go straight,\u201d \u201cPlace tab A into slot B\u201d), this is only its most mundane function. Language also allows us to access existing knowledge, to draw conclusions, to set and accomplish goals, and to understand and communicate complex social relationships. Language is fundamental to our ability to think, and without it we would be nowhere near as intelligent as we are.<\/p>\n<p>Language can be conceptualized in terms of sounds, meaning, and the environmental factors that help us understand it. <em>Phonemes<\/em> are the elementary sounds of our language, <em>morphemes<\/em> are the smallest units of meaning in a language, <em>syntax<\/em> is the set of grammatical rules that control how words are put together, and <em>contextual information<\/em> is the elements of communication that are not part of the content of language but that help us understand its meaning.<\/p>\n<h2>The Components of Language<\/h2>\n<p>A <strong>phoneme<\/strong> is <em>the smallest unit of sound that makes a meaningful difference in a language<\/em>. The word \u201cbit\u201d has three phonemes, \/b\/, \/i\/, and \/t\/ (in transcription, phonemes are placed between slashes), and the word \u201cpit\u201d also has three: \/p\/, \/i\/, and \/t\/. In spoken languages, phonemes are produced by the positions and movements of the vocal tract, including our lips, teeth, tongue, vocal cords, and throat, whereas in sign languages phonemes are defined by the shapes and movement of the hands.<\/p>\n<p>There are hundreds of unique phonemes that can be made by human speakers, but most languages only use a small subset of the possibilities. English contains about 45 phonemes, whereas other languages have as few as 15 and others more than 60. The Hawaiian language contains only about a dozen phonemes, including five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, and w).<\/p>\n<p>In addition to using a different set of phonemes, because the phoneme is actually a category of sounds that are treated alike within the language, speakers of different languages are able to hear the difference only between some phonemes but not others. This is known as the <em>categorical perception of speech sounds<\/em>. English speakers can differentiate the \/r\/ phoneme from the \/l\/ phoneme, and thus \u201crake\u201d and \u201clake\u201d are heard as different words. In Japanese, however, \/r\/ and \/l\/ are the same phoneme, and thus speakers of that language cannot tell the difference between the word \u201crake\u201d and the word \u201clake.\u201d Try saying the words \u201ccool\u201d and \u201ckeep\u201d out loud. Can you hear the difference between the two \/k\/ sounds? To English speakers they both sound the same, but to speakers of Arabic these represent two different phonemes (Figure 10.9, &#8220;Speech Sounds and Adults&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Infants are born able to understand all phonemes, but they lose their ability to do so as they get older; by 10 months of age a child\u2019s ability to recognize phonemes becomes very similar to that of the adult speakers of the native language. Phonemes that were initially differentiated come to be treated as equivalent (Werker &amp; Tees, 2002).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_233\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-233\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f-1024x411.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-233\" height=\"161\" width=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f-1024x411.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f-300x120.jpg 300w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f-65x26.jpg 65w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f-225x90.jpg 225w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f-350x140.jpg 350w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/fdd630cf615e861c4cd1b9dd902cfc0f.jpg 1657w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-233\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 10.9 Speech Sounds and Adults. When adults hear speech sounds that gradually change from one phoneme to another, they do not hear the continuous change; rather, they hear one sound until they suddenly begin hearing the other. In this case, the change is from \/ba\/ to \/pa\/.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Whereas phonemes are the smallest units of sound in language, a <strong>morpheme<\/strong> is <em>a string of one or more phonemes that makes up the smallest units of meaning in a language<\/em>. Some morphemes, such as one-letter words like \u201cI\u201d and \u201ca,\u201d are also phonemes, but most morphemes are made up of combinations of phonemes. Some morphemes are prefixes and suffixes used to modify other words. For example, the syllable \u201cre-\u201d as in \u201crewrite\u201d or \u201crepay\u201d means \u201cto do again,\u201d and the suffix \u201c-est\u201d as in \u201chappiest\u201d or \u201ccoolest\u201d means \u201cto the maximum.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syntax<\/strong> is <em>the set of rules of a language by which we construct sentences<\/em>. Each language has a different syntax. The syntax of the English language requires that each sentence have a noun and a verb, each of which may be modified by adjectives and adverbs. Some syntaxes make use of the order in which words appear, while others do not. In English, \u201cThe man bites the dog\u201d is different from \u201cThe dog bites the man.\u201d In German, however, only the article endings before the noun matter. \u201cDer Hund beisst den Mann\u201d means \u201cThe dog bites the man\u201d but so does \u201cDen Mann beisst der Hund.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Words do not possess fixed meanings but change their interpretation as a function of the context in which they are spoken. We use <strong>contextual information\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014\u00a0<em>the information surrounding language<\/em>\u2014to help us interpret it. Examples of contextual information include the knowledge that we have and that we know that other people have, and nonverbal expressions such as facial expressions, postures, gestures, and tone of voice. Misunderstandings can easily arise if people aren\u2019t attentive to contextual information or if some of it is missing, such as it may be in newspaper headlines or in text messages.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\n<h3>Examples in Which Syntax Is Correct but the Interpretation Can Be Ambiguous<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Grandmother of Eight Makes Hole in One<\/li>\n<li>Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder<\/li>\n<li>Farmer Bill Dies in House<\/li>\n<li>Old School Pillars Are Replaced by Alumni<\/li>\n<li>Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung<\/li>\n<li>Include Your Children When Baking Cookies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2>The Biology and Development of Language<\/h2>\n<p>Anyone who has tried to master a second language as an adult knows the difficulty of language learning. And yet children learn languages easily and naturally. Children who are not exposed to language early in their lives will likely never learn one. Case studies, including Victor the \u201cWild Child,\u201d who was abandoned as a baby in France and not discovered until he was 12, and Genie, a child whose parents kept her locked in a closet from 18 months until 13 years of age, are (fortunately) two of the only known examples of these deprived children. Both of these children made some progress in socialization after they were rescued, but neither of them ever developed language (Rymer, 1993).\u00a0This is also why it is important to determine quickly if a child is deaf and to begin immediately to communicate in sign language. Deaf children who are not exposed to sign language during their early years will likely never learn it (Mayberry, Lock, &amp; Kazmi, 2002).<\/p>\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\n<h3>Research Focus: When Can We Best Learn Language? Testing the Critical Period Hypothesis<\/h3>\n<p>For many years psychologists assumed that there was a <strong>critical period<\/strong> (<em>a time in which learning can easily occur<\/em>) for language learning, lasting between infancy and puberty, and after which language learning was more difficult or impossible (Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield &amp; Roberts, 1959).\u00a0But later research provided a different interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>An important study by Jacqueline Johnson and Elissa Newport (1989)\u00a0using Chinese and Korean speakers who had learned English as a second language provided the first insight. The participants were all adults who had immigrated to the United States between three and 39 years of age and who were tested on their English skills by being asked to detect grammatical errors in sentences. Johnson and Newport found that the participants who had begun learning English before they were seven years old learned it as well as native English speakers but that the ability to learn English dropped off gradually for the participants who had started later. Newport and Johnson also found a correlation between the age of acquisition and the variance in the ultimate learning of the language. While early learners were almost all successful in acquiring their language to a high degree of proficiency, later learners showed much greater individual variation.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson and Newport\u2019s finding that children who immigrated before they were seven years old learned English fluently seemed consistent with the idea of a critical period in language learning. But their finding of a gradual decrease in proficiency for those who immigrated between eight and 39 years of age was not \u2014 rather, it suggested that there might not be a single critical period of language learning that ended at puberty, as early theorists had expected, but that language learning at later ages is simply better when it occurs earlier. This idea was reinforced in research by Hakuta, Bialystok, and Wiley (2003),\u00a0who examined census records of language learning in millions of Chinese and Spanish immigrants. The census form asks respondents to describe their own English ability using one of five categories: not at all, not well, well, very well, and speak only English. The results of this research dealt another blow to the idea of the critical period, because it showed that regardless of what year was used as a cutoff point for the end of the critical period, there was no evidence for any discontinuity in language-learning potential. Rather, the results (Figure 10.10, &#8220;English Proficiency in Native Chinese Speakers&#8221;) showed that the degree of success in second-language acquisition declined steadily throughout the respondent\u2019s life span. The difficulty of learning language as one gets older is probably due to the fact that, with age, the brain loses its <strong>plasticity\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014 that is, <em>its ability to develop new neural connections<\/em>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_234\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-234\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a-1024x410.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-234\" height=\"160\" width=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a-1024x410.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a-300x120.jpg 300w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a-65x26.jpg 65w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a-225x90.jpg 225w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a-350x140.jpg 350w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/02f2d3b43f310f9f58ed7cc7240fea7a.jpg 1678w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-234\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 10.10 English Proficiency in Native Chinese Speakers. Hakuta, Bialystok, and Wiley (2003) found no evidence for critical periods in language learning. Regardless of level of education, self-reported second-language skills decreased consistently across age of immigration.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>For the 90% of people who are right-handed, language is stored and controlled by the left cerebral cortex, although for some left-handers this pattern is reversed. These differences can easily be seen in the results of neuroimaging studies that show that listening to and producing language creates greater activity in the left hemisphere than in the right. <strong>Broca\u2019s area<\/strong>, <em>an area in front of the left hemisphere near the motor cortex<\/em>, is responsible for language production (Figure 10.11, &#8220;Drawing of Brain Showing Broca\u2019s and Wernicke\u2019s Areas&#8221;). This area was first localized in the 1860s by the French physician Paul Broca, who studied patients with lesions to various parts of the brain.<strong> Wernicke\u2019s area<\/strong>, <em>an area of the brain next to the auditory cortex<\/em>, is responsible for language comprehension.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_235\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-235\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4-1024x676.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-235\" height=\"264\" width=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4-1024x676.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4-65x42.jpg 65w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4-225x148.jpg 225w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4-350x231.jpg 350w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/9691b512af9ba507db9435759198dee4.jpg 1697w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-235\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 10.11 Drawing of Brain Showing Broca\u2019s and Wernicke\u2019s Areas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Evidence for the importance of Broca\u2019s and Wernicke\u2019s areas in language is seen in patients who experience <strong>aphasia<\/strong>, <em>a condition in which language functions are severely impaired<\/em>. People with Broca\u2019s aphasia have difficulty producing speech, whereas people with damage to Wernicke\u2019s area can produce speech, but what they say makes no sense and they have trouble understanding language.<\/p>\n<h2>Learning Language<\/h2>\n<p>Language learning begins even before birth, because the fetus can hear muffled versions of speaking from outside the womb. Moon, Cooper, and Fifer (1993)\u00a0found that infants only two days old sucked harder on a pacifier when they heard their mothers\u2019 native language being spoken than when they heard a foreign language, even when strangers were speaking the languages. Babies are also aware of the patterns of their native language, showing surprise when they hear speech that has a different patterns of phonemes than those they are used to (Saffran, Aslin, &amp; Newport, 2004).<\/p>\n<p>During the first year or so after birth, and long before they speak their first words, infants are already learning language. One aspect of this learning is practice in producing speech. By the time they are six to eight\u00a0weeks old, babies start making vowel sounds (ooohh, aaahh, goo) as well as a variety of cries and squeals to help them practice.<\/p>\n<p>At about seven months, infants begin <strong>babbling<\/strong>, engaging in <em>intentional vocalizations that lack specific meaning<\/em>. Children babble as practice in creating specific sounds, and by the time they are one year old, the babbling uses primarily the sounds of the language that they are learning (de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, &amp; Durand, 1984).\u00a0These vocalizations have a conversational tone that sounds meaningful even though it isn\u2019t. Babbling also helps children understand the social, communicative function of language (Figure 10.12, &#8220;Practising Language&#8221;). Children who are exposed to sign language babble in sign by making hand movements that represent real language (Petitto &amp; Marentette, 1991).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4387\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4387\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12.jpg\" alt=\"A young child talking on the phone.\" class=\"wp-image-4387\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12.jpg 640w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12-65x48.jpg 65w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12-225x168.jpg 225w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/10\/Figure-10-12-350x262.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4387\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 10.12 Practising Language. Babies often engage in vocal exchanges to help them practise language.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At the same time that infants are practising their speaking skills by babbling, they are also learning to better understand sounds and eventually the words of language. One of the first words that children understand is their own name, usually by about six months, followed by commonly used words like \u201cbottle,\u201d \u201cmama,\u201d and \u201cdoggie\u201d by 10 to 12 months (Mandel, Jusczyk, &amp; Pisoni, 1995).<\/p>\n<p>The infant usually produces his or her first words at about one year of age. It is at this point that the child first understands that words are more than sounds \u2014 they refer to particular objects and ideas. By the time children are two years old, they have a vocabulary of several hundred words, and by kindergarten their vocabularies have increased to several thousand words. By Grade 5,\u00a0most children know about 50,000 words and by the time they are in university, about 200,000.<\/p>\n<p>The early utterances of children contain many errors, for instance, confusing \/b\/ and \/d\/, or \/c\/ and \/z\/. And the words that children create are often simplified, in part because they are not yet able to make the more complex sounds of the real language (Dobrich &amp; Scarborough, 1992).\u00a0Children may say \u201ckeekee\u201d for kitty, \u201cnana\u201d for banana, and \u201cvesketti\u201d for spaghetti in part because it is easier. Often these early words are accompanied by gestures that may also be easier to produce than the words themselves. Children\u2019s pronunciations become increasingly accurate between one and three years, but some problems may persist until school age.<\/p>\n<p>Most of a child\u2019s first words are nouns, and early sentences may include only the noun. \u201cMa\u201d may mean \u201cmore milk please\u201d and \u201cda\u201d may mean \u201clook, there\u2019s Fido.\u201d Eventually the length of the utterances increases to two words (\u201cmo ma\u201d or \u201cda bark\u201d), and these primitive sentences begin to follow the appropriate syntax of the native language.<\/p>\n<p>Because language involves the active categorization of sounds and words into higher level units, children make some mistakes in interpreting what words mean and how to use them. In particular, they often make <strong>overextensions<\/strong> of concepts, <em>which means they use a given word in a broader context than appropriate<\/em>. A child might at first call all adult men \u201cdaddy\u201d or all animals \u201cdoggie.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Children also use contextual information, particularly the cues that parents provide, to help them learn language. Infants are frequently more attuned to the tone of voice of the person speaking than to the content of the words themselves, and are aware of the target of speech. Werker, Pegg, and McLeod (1994)\u00a0found that infants listened longer to a woman who was speaking to a baby than to a woman who was speaking to another adult.<\/p>\n<p>Children learn that people are usually referring to things that they are looking at when they are speaking (Baldwin, 1993),\u00a0and that that the speaker\u2019s emotional expressions are related to the content of their speech. Children also use their knowledge of syntax to help them figure out what words mean. If a child hears an adult point to a strange object and say, \u201cthis is a dirb,\u201d they will infer that a \u201cdirb\u201d is a thing, but if they hear them say, \u201cthis is a one of those dirb things\u201d they will infer that it refers to the colour or other characteristic of the object. And if they hear the word \u201cdirbing,\u201d they will infer that \u201cdirbing\u201d is something that we do (Waxman, 1990).<\/p>\n<h2>How Children Learn Language: Theories of Language Acquisition<\/h2>\n<p>Psychological theories of language learning differ in terms of the importance they place on nature versus nurture. Yet it is clear that both matter. Children are not born knowing language; they learn to speak by hearing what happens around them. On the other hand, human brains, unlike those of any other animal, are prewired in a way that leads them, almost effortlessly, to learn language.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most straightforward explanation of language development is that it occurs through principles of learning, including association, reinforcement, and the observation of others (Skinner, 1965).\u00a0There must be at least some truth to the idea that language is learned, because children learn the language that they hear spoken around them rather than some other language. Also supporting this idea is the gradual improvement of language skills with time. It seems that children modify their language through imitation, reinforcement, and shaping, as would be predicted by learning theories.<\/p>\n<p>But language cannot be entirely learned. For one, children learn words too fast for them to be learned through reinforcement. Between the ages of 18 months and five years, children learn up to 10 new words every day (Anglin, 1993).\u00a0More importantly, language is more <em>generative<\/em> than it is imitative. <strong>Generativity<\/strong> refers to <em>the fact that speakers of a language can compose sentences to represent new ideas that they have never before been exposed to<\/em>. Language is not a predefined set of ideas and sentences that we choose when we need them, but rather a system of rules and procedures that allows us to create an infinite number of statements, thoughts, and ideas, including those that have never previously occurred. When a child says that she \u201cswimmed\u201d in the pool, for instance, she is showing generativity. No adult speaker of English would ever say \u201cswimmed,\u201d yet it is easily generated from the normal system of producing language.<\/p>\n<p>Other evidence that refutes the idea that all language is learned through experience comes from the observation that children may learn languages better than they ever hear them. Deaf children whose parents do not speak ASL very well nevertheless are able to learn it perfectly on their own, and may even make up their own language if they need to (Goldin-Meadow &amp; Mylander, 1998).\u00a0A group of deaf children in a school in Nicaragua, whose teachers could not sign, invented a way to communicate through made-up signs (Senghas, Senghas, &amp; Pyers, 2005).\u00a0The development of this new Nicaraguan Sign Language has continued and changed as new generations of students have come to the school and started using the language. Although the original system was not a real language, it is becoming closer and closer every year, showing the development of a new language in modern times.<\/p>\n<p>The linguist Noam Chomsky is a believer in the nature approach to language, arguing that human brains contain a <em>language acquisition device<\/em> that includes a <em>universal grammar<\/em> that underlies all human language (Chomsky, 1965, 1972).\u00a0According to this approach, each of the many languages spoken around the world (there are between 6,000 and 8,000) is an individual example of the same underlying set of procedures that are hardwired into human brains. Chomsky\u2019s account proposes that children are born with a knowledge of general rules of syntax that determine how sentences are constructed.<\/p>\n<p>Chomsky differentiates between the<strong> deep structure of an idea\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014\u00a0<em>how the idea is represented in the fundamental universal grammar that is common to all languages<\/em>, and the <strong>surface structure of the idea\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014\u00a0<em>how it is expressed in any one language<\/em>. Once we hear or express a thought in surface structure, we generally forget exactly how it happened. At the end of a lecture, you will remember a lot of the deep structure (i.e., the ideas expressed by the instructor), but you cannot reproduce the surface structure (the exact words that the instructor used to communicate the ideas).<\/p>\n<p>Although there is general agreement among psychologists that babies are genetically programmed to learn language, there is still debate about Chomsky\u2019s idea that there is a universal grammar that can account for all language learning. Evans and Levinson (2009)\u00a0surveyed the world\u2019s languages and found that none of the presumed underlying features of the language acquisition device were entirely universal. In their search they found languages that did not have noun or verb phrases, that did not have tenses (e.g., past, present, future), and even some that did not have nouns or verbs at all, even though a basic assumption of a universal grammar is that all languages should share these features.<\/p>\n<h2>Bilingualism and Cognitive Development<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Bilingualism<\/strong> (<em>the ability to speak two languages<\/em>) is becoming more and more frequent in the modern world. Nearly one-half of the world\u2019s population, including 17% of Canadian citizens, grows up bilingual.<\/p>\n<p>In Canada, education is under provincial jurisdiction; however, the federal government has been a strong supporter of establishing Canada as a bilingual country and has helped pioneer the French immersion programs in the public education systems throughout the country. In contrast,\u00a0many U.S. states have passed laws outlawing bilingual education in schools based on the idea that students will have a stronger identity with the school, the culture, and the government if they speak only English, and in part based on the idea that speaking two languages may interfere with cognitive development.<\/p>\n<p>A variety of minority language immersion programs are now offered across the country depending on need and interest. In British Columbia, for instance,\u00a0the city of Vancouver \u00a0established a new bilingual Mandarin Chinese-English immersion program in\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">2002\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">at the elementary school level in order accommodate Vancouver&#8217;s both historic and present strong ties to the Chinese-speaking world. Similar programs have been developed for both Hindi and Punjabi to serve the large South Asian cultural community in the city of Surrey. By default, most schools in British Columbia teach in English, with French immersion options available. In both English and French schools, one can study and take government exams in Japanese, Punjabi, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, and German at the secondary level.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Some early psychological research showed that, when compared with monolingual children, bilingual children performed more slowly when processing language, and their verbal scores were lower. But these tests were frequently given in English, even when this was not the child\u2019s first language, and the children tested were often of lower socioeconomic status than the monolingual children (Andrews, 1982).<\/p>\n<p>More current research that has controlled for these factors has found that, although bilingual children may, in some cases, learn language somewhat slower than do monolingual children (Oller &amp; Pearson, 2002),\u00a0bilingual and monolingual children do not significantly differ in the final depth of language learning, nor do they generally confuse the two languages (Nicoladis &amp; Genesee, 1997).\u00a0In fact, participants who speak two languages have been found to have better cognitive functioning, cognitive flexibility, and analytic skills in comparison to monolinguals (Bialystok, 2009).\u00a0Research (Figure 10.13, &#8220;Gray Matter in Bilinguals&#8221;) has also found that learning a second language produces changes in the area of the brain in the left hemisphere that is involved in language, such that this area is denser and contains more neurons (Mechelli et al., 2004).\u00a0Furthermore, the increased density is stronger in those individuals who are most proficient in their second language and who learned the second language earlier. Thus, rather than slowing language development, learning a second language seems to increase cognitive abilities.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_237\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-237\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f-682x1024.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-237\" height=\"600\" width=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f-682x1024.jpg 682w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f-65x97.jpg 65w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f-225x337.jpg 225w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f-350x525.jpg 350w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2013\/11\/35c08232d2ab70983f428dfaf1ca950f.jpg 1604w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-237\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 10.13 Gray Matter in Bilinguals. Andrea Mechelli and her colleagues (2004) found that children who were bilingual had increased gray matter density (i.e., more neurons) in cortical areas related to language in comparison to monolinguals (panel a), that gray matter density correlated positively with second language proficiency (panel b) and that gray matter density correlated negatively with the age at which the second language was learned (panel c).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Can Animals Learn Language?<\/h2>\n<p>Nonhuman animals have a wide variety of systems of communication. Some species communicate using scents; others use visual displays, such as baring the teeth, puffing up the fur, or flapping the wings; and still others use vocal sounds. Male songbirds, such as canaries and finches, sing songs to attract mates and to protect territory, and chimpanzees use a combination of facial expressions, sounds, and actions, such as slapping the ground, to convey aggression (de Waal, 1989).\u00a0Honeybees use a waggle dance to direct other bees to the location of food sources (von Frisch, 1956).\u00a0The language of vervet monkeys is relatively advanced in the sense that they use specific sounds to communicate specific meanings. Vervets make different calls to signify that they have seen either a leopard, a snake, or a hawk (Seyfarth &amp; Cheney, 1997).<\/p>\n<p>Despite their wide abilities to communicate, efforts to teach animals to use language have had only limited success. One of the early efforts was made by Catherine and Keith Hayes, who raised a chimpanzee named Viki in their home along with their own children. But Viki learned little and could never speak (Hayes &amp; Hayes, 1952).\u00a0Researchers speculated that Viki\u2019s difficulties might have been in part because she could not create the words in her vocal cords, and so subsequent attempts were made to teach primates to speak using sign language or boards on which they can point to symbols.<\/p>\n<p>Allen and Beatrix Gardner worked for many years to teach a chimpanzee named Washoe to sign using ASL. Washoe, who lived to be 42 years old, could label up to 250 different objects and make simple requests and comments, such as \u201cplease tickle\u201d and \u201cme sorry\u201d (Fouts, 1997).\u00a0Washoe\u2019s adopted daughter Loulis, who was never exposed to human signers, learned more than 70 signs simply by watching her mother sign.<\/p>\n<p>The most proficient nonhuman language speaker is Kanzi, a bonobo who lives at the Language Learning Center at Georgia State University (Savage-Rumbaugh &amp; Lewin, 1994).\u00a0As you can see in &#8220;Video Clip: Language Recognition in Bonobos,&#8221; Kanzi has a propensity for language that is in many ways similar to humans. He learned faster when he was younger than when he got older, he learns by observation, and he can use symbols to comment on social interactions, rather than simply for food treats. Kanzi can also create elementary syntax and understand relatively complex commands. Kanzi can make tools and can even play the video game Pac-Man.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/09\/kanzi.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/09\/kanzi-150x150.png\" alt=\"&quot;&quot;\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2692 size-thumbnail\" height=\"150\" width=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/09\/kanzi-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/09\/kanzi-65x65.png 65w, https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2014\/09\/kanzi.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><em>The bonobo Kanzi is the most proficient known nonhuman language speaker.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE\">Watch: &#8220;Kanzi and Novel Sentences&#8221; [YouTube]<\/a>: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And yet even Kanzi does not have a true language in the same way that humans do. Human babies learn words faster and faster as they get older, but Kanzi does not. Each new word he learns is almost as difficult as the one before. Kanzi usually requires many trials to learn a new sign, whereas human babies can speak words after only one exposure. Kanzi\u2019s language is focused primarily on food and pleasure and only rarely on social relationships. Although he can combine words, he generates few new phrases and cannot master syntactic rules beyond the level of about a two-year-old human child (Greenfield &amp; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991).<\/p>\n<p>In sum, although many animals communicate, none of them has a true language. With some exceptions, the information that can be communicated in nonhuman species is limited primarily to displays of liking or disliking, and related to basic motivations of aggression and mating. Humans also use this more primitive type of communication, in the form of <em>nonverbal behaviours<\/em> such as eye contact, touch, hand signs, and interpersonal distance, to communicate their like or dislike for others, but they (unlike animals) also supplant this more primitive communication with language. Although other animal brains share similarities to ours, only the human brain is complex enough to create language. What is perhaps most remarkable is that although language never appears in nonhumans, language is universal in humans. All humans, unless they have a profound brain abnormality or are completely isolated from other humans, learn language.<\/p>\n<h2>Language and Perception<\/h2>\n<p>To this point in the chapter we have considered intelligence and language as if they are separate concepts. But what if language influences our thinking? <em>The idea that language and its structures influence and limit human thought<\/em> is called<strong> linguistic relativity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The most frequently cited example of this possibility was proposed by Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941), a linguist who was particularly interested in Aboriginal languages. Whorf argued that the Inuit people of Canada had many words for snow, whereas English speakers have only one, and that this difference influenced how the different cultures perceived snow. Whorf argued that the Inuit perceived and categorized snow in finer details than English speakers possibly could, because the English language constrained perception.<\/p>\n<p>Although the idea of linguistic relativism seemed reasonable, research has suggested that language has less influence on thinking than might be expected. For one, in terms of perceptions of snow, although it is true that the Inuit do make more distinctions among types of snow than English speakers\u00a0do, the latter also make some distinctions (think powder, slush, whiteout, and so forth). And it is also possible that thinking about snow may influence language, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n<p>In a more direct test of the possibility that language influences thinking, Eleanor Rosch (1973)\u00a0compared people from the Dani culture of New Guinea, who have only two terms for colour (dark and bright), with English speakers who use many more terms. Rosch hypothesized that if language constrains perception and categorization, then the Dani should have a harder time distinguishing colours than English speakers\u00a0would. But her research found that when the Dani were asked to categorize colours using new categories, they did so in almost the same way that English speakers did. Similar results were found by Frank, Everett, Fedorenko, and Gibson (2008),\u00a0who showed that the Amazonian tribe known as the Pirah\u00e3, who have no linguistic method for expressing exact quantities (not even the number one), were nevertheless able to perform matches with large numbers without problem.<\/p>\n<p>Although these data led researchers to conclude that the language we use to describe colour and number does not influence our underlying understanding of the underlying sensation, another more recent study has questioned this assumption. Roberson, Davies, and Davidoff (2000)\u00a0conducted another study with Dani participants and found that, at least for some colours, the names that they used to describe colours did influence their perceptions of the colours. Other researchers continue to test the possibility that our language influences our perceptions, and perhaps even our thoughts (Levinson, 1998),\u00a0and yet the evidence for this possibility is, as of now, mixed.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-success\">\n<h3>Key Takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Language involves both the ability to comprehend spoken and written words and to speak and write. Some languages are sign languages, in which the communication is expressed by movements of the hands.<\/li>\n<li>Phonemes are the elementary sounds of our language, morphemes are the smallest units of meaningful language, syntax is the grammatical rules that control how words are put together, and contextual information is the elements of communication that help us understand its meaning.<\/li>\n<li>Recent research suggests that there is not a single critical period of language learning, but that language learning is simply better when it occurs earlier.<\/li>\n<li>Broca\u2019s area is responsible for language production. Wernicke\u2019s area is responsible for language comprehension.<\/li>\n<li>Language learning begins even before birth. An infant usually produces his or her first words at about one year of age.<\/li>\n<li>One explanation of language development is that it occurs through principles of learning, including association, reinforcement, and the observation of others.<\/li>\n<li>Noam Chomsky argues that human brains contain a language acquisition module that includes a universal grammar that underlies all human language. Chomsky differentiates between the deep structure and the surface structure of an idea.<\/li>\n<li>Although other animals communicate and may be able to express ideas, only the human brain is complex enough to create real language.<\/li>\n<li>Our language may have some influence on our thinking, but it does not affect our underlying understanding of concepts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-info\">\n<h3>Exercises and Critical Thinking<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li>What languages do you speak? Did you ever try to learn a new one? What problems did you have when you did this? Would you consider trying to learn a new language?<\/li>\n<li>Some animals, such as Kanzi, display at least some language. Do you think that this means that they are intelligent?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<h2>References<\/h2>\n<p>Andrews, I. (1982). Bilinguals out of focus: A critical discussion.\u00a0<i>International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 20<\/i>(4), 297\u2013305.<\/p>\n<p>Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis.\u00a0<i>Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58<\/i>(10), v\u2013165.<\/p>\n<p>Baldwin, D. A. (1993). Early referential understanding: Infants\u2019 ability to recognize referential acts for what they are.\u00a0<i>Developmental Psychology, 29<\/i>(5), 832\u2013843.<\/p>\n<p>Bialystok, E. (2009). Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent.\u00a0<i>Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12<\/i>(1), 3\u201311.<\/p>\n<p>Chomsky, N. (1965).\u00a0<i>Aspects of the theory of syntax<\/i>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<\/p>\n<p>Chomsky, N. (1972).\u00a0<i>Language and mind<\/i>\u00a0(Extended ed.). New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace &amp; Jovanovich.<\/p>\n<p>de Boysson-Bardies, B., Sagart, L., &amp; Durand, C. (1984). Discernible differences in the babbling of infants according to target language.\u00a0<i>Journal of Child Language, 11<\/i>(1), 1\u201315.<\/p>\n<p>de Waal, F. (1989).\u00a0<i>Peacemaking among primates<\/i>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.<\/p>\n<p>Dobrich, W., &amp; Scarborough, H. S. (1992). Phonological characteristics of words young children try to say.\u00a0<i>Journal of Child Language, 19<\/i>(3), 597\u2013616.<\/p>\n<p>Evans, N., &amp; Levinson, S. C. (2009). The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science.\u00a0<i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32<\/i>(5), 429\u2013448.<\/p>\n<p>Fouts, R. (1997).\u00a0<i>Next of kin: What chimpanzees have taught me about who we are<\/i>. New York, NY: William Morrow.<\/p>\n<p>Frank, M. C., Everett, D. L., Fedorenko, E., &amp; Gibson, E. (2008). Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirah\u00e3 language and cognition.\u00a0<i>Cognition, 108<\/i>(3), 819\u2013824.<\/p>\n<p>Goldin-Meadow, S., &amp; Mylander, C. (1998). Spontaneous sign systems created by deaf children in two cultures.\u00a0<i>Nature, 391<\/i>(6664), 279\u2013281.<\/p>\n<p>Greenfield, P. M., &amp; Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S. (1991). Imitation, grammatical development, and the invention of protogrammar by an ape. In N. A. Krasnegor, D. M. Rumbaugh, R. L. Schiefelbusch, &amp; M. Studdert-Kennedy (Eds.),\u00a0<i>Biological and behavioral determinants of language development<\/i>\u00a0(pp. 235\u2013258). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.<\/p>\n<p>Hakuta, K., Bialystok, E., &amp; Wiley, E. (2003). Critical evidence: A test of the critical-period hypothesis for second-language acquisition.\u00a0<i>Psychological Science, 14<\/i>(1), 31\u201338.<\/p>\n<p>Hayes, K. J., and Hayes, C. (1952). Imitation in a home-raised chimpanzee.\u00a0<i>Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 45,<\/i>\u00a0450\u2013459.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, J. S., &amp; Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language.\u00a0<i>Cognitive Psychology, 21<\/i>(1), 60\u201399.<\/p>\n<p>Lenneberg, E. (1967).\u00a0<i>Biological foundations of language<\/i>. New York, NY: John Wiley &amp; Sons.<\/p>\n<p>Levinson, S. C. (1998). Studying spatial conceptualization across cultures: Anthropology and cognitive science.\u00a0<i>Ethos, 26<\/i>(1), 7\u201324.<\/p>\n<p>Mandel, D. R., Jusczyk, P. W., &amp; Pisoni, D. B. (1995). Infants\u2019 recognition of the sound patterns of their own names.\u00a0<i>Psychological Science, 6<\/i>(5), 314\u2013317.<\/p>\n<p>Mayberry, R. I., Lock, E., &amp; Kazmi, H. (2002). Development: Linguistic ability and early language exposure.\u00a0<i>Nature, 417<\/i>(6884), 38.<\/p>\n<p>Mechelli, A., Crinion, J. T., Noppeney, U., O\u2019Doherty, J., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., &amp; Price C. J. (2004). Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain: Proficiency in a second language and age at acquisition affect grey-matter density.\u00a0<i>Nature, 431<\/i>, 757.<\/p>\n<p>Moon, C., Cooper, R. P., &amp; Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day-olds prefer their native language.\u00a0<i>Infant Behavior &amp; Development, 16<\/i>(4), 495\u2013500.<\/p>\n<p>Nicoladis, E., &amp; Genesee, F. (1997). Language development in preschool bilingual children.\u00a0<i>Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, 21<\/i>(4), 258\u2013270.<\/p>\n<p>Oller, D. K., &amp; Pearson, B. Z. (2002). Assessing the effects of bilingualism: A background. In D. K. Oller &amp; R. E. Eilers (Eds.),\u00a0<i>Language and literacy in bilingual children<\/i>\u00a0(pp. 3\u201321). Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters.<\/p>\n<p>Penfield, W., &amp; Roberts, L. (1959).\u00a0<i>Speech and brain mechanisms<\/i>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n<p>Petitto, L. A., &amp; Marentette, P. F. (1991). Babbling in the manual mode: Evidence for the ontogeny of language.\u00a0<i>Science, 251<\/i>(5000), 1493\u20131496.<\/p>\n<p>Roberson, D., Davies, I., &amp; Davidoff, J. (2000). Color categories are not universal: Replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture.\u00a0<i>Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129<\/i>(3), 369\u2013398.<\/p>\n<p>Rosch, E. H. (1973). Natural categories.\u00a0<i>Cognitive Psychology, 4<\/i>(3), 328\u2013350.<\/p>\n<p>Rymer, R. (1993).\u00a0<i>Genie: An abused child\u2019s flight from silence<\/i>. New York, NY: HarperCollins.<\/p>\n<p>Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., &amp; Newport, E. L. (2004).\u00a0<i>Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants<\/i>. New York, NY: Psychology Press.<\/p>\n<p>Savage-Rumbaugh, S., &amp; Lewin, R. (1994).\u00a0<i>Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human mind<\/i>. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &amp; Sons.<\/p>\n<p>Senghas, R. J., Senghas, A., &amp; Pyers, J. E. (2005). The emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language: Questions of development, acquisition, and evolution. In S. T. Parker, J. Langer, &amp; C. Milbrath (Eds.),\u00a0<i>Biology and knowledge revisited: From neurogenesis to psychogenesis<\/i>\u00a0(pp. 287\u2013306). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.<\/p>\n<p>Seyfarth, R. M., &amp; Cheney, D. L. (1997). Behavioral mechanisms underlying vocal communication in nonhuman primates.\u00a0<i>Animal Learning &amp; Behavior, 25<\/i>(3), 249\u2013267.<\/p>\n<p>Skinner, B. F. (1965).\u00a0<i>Science and human behavior.<\/i>\u00a0New York, NY: Free Press.<\/p>\n<p>von Frisch, K. (1956).\u00a0<i>Bees: Their vision, chemical senses, and language<\/i>. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.<\/p>\n<p>Waxman, S. R. (1990). Linguistic biases and the establishment of conceptual hierarchies: Evidence from preschool children.\u00a0<i>Cognitive Development, 5<\/i>(2), 123\u2013150.<\/p>\n<p>Werker, J. F., &amp; Tees, R. C. (2002). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life.\u00a0<i>Infant Behavior &amp; Development, 25<\/i>(1), 121\u2013133.<\/p>\n<p>Werker, J. F., Pegg, J. E., &amp; McLeod, P. J. (1994). A cross-language investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication.\u00a0<i>Infant Behavior &amp; Development, 17<\/i>(3), 323\u2013333.<\/p>\n<p>Wood, C. C. (1976). Discriminability, response bias, and phoneme categories in discrimination of voice onset time. <em>Journal of the Acoustical Society of America<\/em>, 60(6), 1381\u20131389.<\/p>\n<h2>Image Attributions:<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Figure 10.9:<\/strong> Adapted from Wood, 1976.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 10.10:<\/strong> Adapted from Hakuta, Bialystok, &amp; Wiley, 2003.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 10.12:<\/strong> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/criminalintent\/4310323032\/\">on the phone to mama<\/a>&#8221; by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/criminalintent\/\">Lars Plougmann<\/a> (http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/criminalintent\/4310323032\/) is licensed under <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/deed.en_CA\">CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a> license (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/deed.en_CA)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 10.13:<\/strong> Adapted from Mechelli, et al., 2004.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-238","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":449,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4658,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/238\/revisions\/4658"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/449"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/238\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontopsychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}